I made the whole thing. All of it. (Except for the shoes and stockings, of course.) That's right, the coat, the breeches, the blouse, the corset, the hat--all made by me.

The shiny things on the coat are mainly earrings and necklaces I found at work, and a few nautical-themed charms I got at girls' camp. All the buttons are pennies. I don't even know how many pennies there are on this thing.

Speaking of thrifty, I only spent $7 on this. $6 on the fabric for the coat, which is a former set of bedsheets I got at a thrift store, and $1 on the belt, which I got at a different thrift store. (I had to made the belt buckle out of copper wire.) All the other materials for this costume I already had! It makes me feel productive to make stuff without doing a lot of shopping.

The styles are all period-accurate, as far I can tell. The materials, and the construction, not so much. I mean, I can justify using cotton because, even though cotton was illegal in most of Europe, I figure that wouldn't stop a pirate from just going down to India and getting it straight from the source. I admit that corsets weren't closed with busks in those days, but I really wasn't about to lace myself in every time. And the pennies . . . well it's hardly possible to have US pennies when the US didn't exist yet, but fortunately most of them are so scratched up and mutilated from having holes pounded into them, that it's hard to tell at a glance that they are pennies.

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